How to embed a YouTube channel on your website
YouTube is one of the largest video platforms with millions of active users worldwide. So it doesn’t surprise that many websites and business owners use it for commercial purposes. You can advertise your brand, display your products, or share tutorials and opinions on different subjects. One of the most appealing benefits is that you can transform the effort placed in creating videos to benefit your website. You can embed a YouTube channel URL on your website and double your potential without doubling your effort. As a result, this will allow you to grow your audience and increase traffic on both ends.
Common ways to embed a YouTube channel on your website
Besides being one of the largest video platforms, YouTube is also among the largest social media platforms. Its common daily use makes it applicable for marketing purposes. By embedding your channel on your website, a large percentage of your visitors will become subscribers. And vice versa – a part of your subscribers will surely take time to check out your website.
To ensure you do it properly, we’ll discuss a few ways that can help you embed your YouTube channel on your website. But first, let’s see why this is important.
Why should you embed a YouTube Channel on a website?
By creating video content, you provide your audience with additional media to help them digest your offer. This is especially helpful for industries that are typically not revolving around this kind of content. By investing in this, you can easily stand out among your competitors. But that’s not the only reason. Videos on your website are often very effective for promotion:
- A YouTube channel has great potential to improve your SEO.
- It may increase the engagement of your audience.
- Videos provide more detailed descriptions of your products or services.
- You can show the practical appliance of your product.
- You can increase your website’s visibility and brand awareness.
On the other side, you can maximize and use the marketing potential of your site to improve your Youtube channel as well. The embedding process is not even that complex. Of course, if you don’t have the knowledge, you will need professional help to embed and maintain it on your website. But if you do have some, you can use one of many tools to complete embedding yourself.
Now that you understand the potential, it’s time to see how to embed code to a YouTube channel.
Embed a YouTube channel with plugins
If you have a WordPress website, using plugins is the most efficient way to embed your already successful YouTube channel. With all the tasks the plugins will complete for you, this will be a semi-automated process that requires no coding knowledge. In just a few minutes, you’ll be able to display your channel on your website.
Some of the best plugins for embedding
Depending on the plugin, the options are many. You can display your youtube channel, anything from a single video to playlists to the entire channel. Some even allow you to auto-embed live stream. Here are some of the best plugins for video embedding:
- Feeds for YouTube
- YourChannel
- WP YouTube Lyte
- Video Gallery
- Feed Them Social
- YotuWP
- ARVE – Advanced Responsive Video Embedder
Most of them are beginner-friendly, so you don’t have to be a WordPress expert to use them.
How to configure and install plugins
To ensure your plugins work, first, you need to get something called a YouTube API key. This is necessary, so your plugin can interact with YouTube. You will also need your username or your channel ID. You can get your channel ID from the URL of your channel:
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/IC3cYZuVV5Fx5v3NiIgSukM6 – the bold part of the URL is your channel ID.
For the sake of explanation, we’ll use Feeds for YouTube – plugin. Here are the steps:
- Go to Plugins>Add New and find the desired plugin
- Install and activate
- Go to the plugin settings page to configure it
- Connect your channel by logging in
- Enter your YouTube API key to unlock all feed types
- Choose your feed type and customize it
- Save the changes and copy the shortcode from the bottom of the setting page.
- Paste the shortcode code directly into the post, page, or widget where you want to display the feed.
And that’s it – everything is ready to draw traffic to your website. You can additionally experiment with customization until you find the desired layout. The best part is, like most plugins, this doesn’t require any HTML, CSS, or JavaScript knowledge.
Alternate embedding method
There is another method to embed a YouTube channel on your website. However, this method is not nearly as convenient as with plugins.
You can manually embed a YouTube player using the iframe tag (<iframe>). Or, you can embed the player by using IFrame Player API. This method, however, requires decent coding knowledge so you can specify player parameters appropriately. The point is, you will need to know how and where to copy code snippets. And be able to modify them so you can customize the player. The biggest downside of this method is that you have to embed each video separately – which can be pretty time-consuming. Or, you can embed a playlist. Anything more than that is exceptionally complicated for an average user. But if you must do it this way, make sure to find a professional so you don’t accidentally break your website.
Conclusion
A website is an excellent way to promote your business, services, and products. But video material allows potential clients to visualize your offer and connect on a deeper level. And if you take this immense potential and place it on your website directly, it will surely enhance your business. When you embed a YouTube channel on your website, you benefit both platforms. One will send your existing subscribers to your website and increase its traffic, while the other will allow regular website visitors to engage more through video material.